Chairman
Flores, Ranking Member Takano and members of the Subcommittee, on behalf of the
men and women of the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States (VFW) and
our Auxiliaries, I want to thank you for the opportunity to present the VFW’s
stance on legislation pending before this Subcommittee.

With
deep proposed reductions in the military’s active duty force, the VFW believes
that offering quality transitional, educational and career-development
opportunities for the men and women slated to leave military service remains a
national imperative.

We thank this committee for its hard work in the first session of the 113th
Congress moving critical legislation to make this possible – particularly the
recently-passed in-state tuition protection for college-bound veterans. The VFW
encourages you to continue your bipartisan work to improve civilian training
and career opportunities for our veterans, and we look forward to working with
you to accomplish this critical mission.

H.R. 2942, to amend title 38, United
States Code, to reestablish the Professional Certification and Licensure
Advisory Committee of the Department of Veterans Affairs:

The
VFW supports Rep. Kirkpatrick’s bill, which will extend a critical advisory
committee on professional licenses and certifications for the Department of
Veterans Affairs (VA). At a time when the Department of Labor anticipates a
significant influx of veterans into the civilian workforce, VA must have the
ability to evaluate professional licenses and certifications for which veterans
may choose to use their earned education benefits. This advisory committee
provides critical expertise to VA with which to evaluate professional licenses
and credentials.

The
VFW has long acknowledged that not all veterans entitled to VA education
benefits will choose to use those benefits for a traditional college degree.
This is why we fully support allowing veterans to use these benefits for
relevant professional training, as well as licensure and certification
evaluations that will lead to quality careers.

H.R. 3056, Warriors’ Peer-Outreach Pilot
Program Act:

The
VFW supports Rep. Takano’s efforts to better understand the positive impact of
peer support for student veterans going back to college. However, we have
concerns over this bill’s proposal to commission a pilot program on
peer-to-peer support for student veterans.

The
VFW already believes that peer support works and we believe this can be
demonstrated through the rapid growth of nearly 1,000 Student Veterans of
America chapters on college campuses around the country. VFW posts in college
communities have also helped to cultivate significant peer-to-peer support for
student veterans on college campuses with tremendous success for future veteran
leaders.

VA
has also commissioned two unique programs designed to serve student veterans on
college campuses, VetSuccess on Campus (VSOC) and Veterans Integration to
Academic Leadership (VITAL), which offer unique VA support services to
veterans. VSOC assists veterans on more than 90 campuses and VITAL was recently
expanded to 15 campuses. In 2010, the Department of Education also awarded
grants to 15 college campuses to commission Centers of Excellence for Veteran
Student Success (CEVSS) to deliver support services to student veterans.

VSOC,
VITAL and CEVSS all have the authority to hire student veterans as VA WorkStudy
participants, and many campuses are already taking advantage of this resource
to deliver peer-to-peer services. The VFW believes that Congress should look to
these programs to better understand how to best deliver peer-to-peer support
services to veterans on campus.

Finally,
the VFW supports Rep. Takano’s goal to report on the efficacy of peer-to-peer
support services for veterans in higher education. However, in lieu of
commissioning three new peer support programs, the VFW recommends identifying
current peer-to-peer support programs commissioned through the VA WorkStudy
program to support VSOC, VITAL and CEVSS, and reporting on their efficacy.

To
properly reflect the diverse experiences of veterans in higher education and to
produce a quality report on the success of peer support in higher education,
the VFW recommends expanding the proposed report to reflect a geographically
diverse selection of four-year public schools, community colleges, and private
non-profit universities; as well as examples of non-profit online programs, elite
non-profit schools, for-profit campus-based programs, and for-profit online
programs.

The
VFW agrees with Rep. Takano that we know far too little about the experiences
of student veterans in higher education. The first statistically valid report
on student veteran outcomes in higher education was released by SVA only earlier
this week. The VFW supports studying examples of current peer support models to
demonstrate success, and we look forward to working with Rep. Takano and the
subcommittee to make this happen.

H.R. 3614, Military Skills to Careers
Act:

The
VFW supported this bill’s Senate companion, S. 492, in testimony last year, and
we support Rep. Flores’ efforts to help close the civilian/military licensing
and credentialing gap. This bill takes reasonable steps to ensure that states
will allow experienced military professionals to sit for licensing exams, while
still ensuring states have the autonomy to issue professional licenses as they
see fit. States will not have to relax their standards for professionals
operating within their borders, but experienced veterans will not be
unnecessarily burdened with satisfying duplicative training requirements.

However,
the VFW has some concerns over the specific language of this bill, and we want
to work with the subcommittee to ensure that states will not be penalized for
holding military-trained professionals to standards established by professional
trade associations, but enforced by the states through licensing procedures.

Chairman
Miller’s bill would provide the Secretary the authority to remove a Senior
Executive Service (SES) employee based on performance. Accountability within VA
management is a growing concern. Without defined authority to remove an SES
employee from a position or from employment, accountability for poor
performance will never be reached.

Section
7543 of title 5, U.S.C., provides the authority to suspend or remove a member
of the SES. This provision of law provides for two things: First, an agency may
remove or suspend a senior executive only for misconduct, neglect of duty,
malfeasance, or failure to accept a direct reassignment. Second, it provides
that members of the SES are entitled to at least 30 days advance written notice
of why disciplinary action is being proposed, at least 7 days to respond to the
notice for suspension or removal, representation by an attorney or other representative,
and a written decision with specific reasons. The agency may also provide for a
hearing to allow the SES member a chance to answer questions. The problem with
this scenario is that it allows SES employees to engage in a perpetual back-and-forth
with their superiors through archaic legal processes. This means that SES
employees can rarely be sanctioned or removed for poor performance, as Chairman
Miller has rightly pointed out.

This
bill will provide the Secretary the authority to remove SES employees when the
Secretary determines that poor work performance warrants such removal. While it
is important for the Secretary to have the ability to quickly remove employees,
and specifically members of the SES, it is also important to recognize that
members of the SES are career employees who serve as the link between political
appointees and the civil service employees of the department, and that allowing
removal without due process or the ability to appeal could jeopardize the
unique roll of the SES.

The
VFW would support this legislation if it were amended to place a 30 day
limitation, with one opportunity for an additional 30 day extension, on the
title 5 provision that allows at least 7 days for an SES employee to respond to
the notice of suspension or removal. This would force notified SES members to
quickly respond to their notification, thereby decreasing the time it takes to
remove an underperforming SES member. SES members must also retain their appeal
rights through the Merit Systems Protection Board. These changes would send a
clear message to underperforming employees, but provide needed protection for
positions that were designed to provide and retain institutional knowledge and
reduce cronyism.

The
VFW supports the intent of Rep. Flores’ bill to ensure that VA’s Vocational
Rehabilitation and Employment (VR&E) Program has the ability to provide
rehabilitative services to veterans who need it the most. The VFW also supports
Flores’ initiative to more accurately measure success within the program.

By
design, VR&E is supposed to offer intensive rehabilitative services to
veterans who must be retrained in a new civilian industry because of their
service-connected disability. Under current law, any veteran with a
service-connected rating of 10 percent or more is eligible for VR&E.

Through
this legislation, Rep. Flores hopes to ensure that VR&E can continue to
meet an increasing demand for rehabilitative services among veterans who need
it the most – specifically disabled veterans with significant barriers to
employment.

The
VFW understands that VR&E in its current form is nearly at capacity for
offering rehabilitative services to disabled veterans. According to VA’s own
data, VR&E counselors are already working beyond a reasonable capacity,
with counselors serving veterans at a ratio of 145:1, when VA’s standard of
service is 125:1. With more and more service members projected to leave the
military in the coming years, the VFW shares Rep. Flores’ concerns that
VR&E may not be able to adequately serve the veterans who will need it the
most if changes are not made to the current system.

However, the VFW worries that restricting eligibility for VR&E will lead to
some disabled veterans falling through the cracks. Though the VFW cannot
support this bill in its current form, we look forward to working with Rep.
Flores to develop meaningful reforms for VR&E that will ensure VA can
deliver quality rehabilitative service to veterans who need it without
restricting access.

The
VFW supports Rep. Flores’ bill to ensure that VA prioritizes the completion of
its information technology (IT) solution for processing VA education benefit
claims. The VFW acknowledges the significant progress VA has made in the
timeliness and accuracy of its GI Bill benefit processing. However, we share
the subcommittee’s concerns that as Veterans Benefits Administration sees
success in education benefit processing, they have now shifted resources to
focus solely on the disability claims backlog. The VFW understands VBA’s
urgency in seeking to resolve the backlog, but we must not neglect the mission
to properly serve student veterans. By completing the IT solution, we ensure
that education benefits can continue to be processed in a timely, accurate
manner.

H.R. 4147, Student Veterans IT Upgrade
Act:

The
VFW supports Rep. Takano’s bill to commission a report to Congress on the status
of VA’s education IT systems. Similar to H.R. 4038, the VFW believes that VBA
has an obligation to process timely and accurate education benefits. Critical
to this is the development and completion of VBA’s education IT systems. This
report is a responsible way to demonstrate progress in IT development, identify
potential shortcomings and develop a course of action to complete tasks. To the
VFW, this bill is responsible governance and we support its quick passage.

H.R. 4151, Veterans Education Survey Act
of 2014:

The
VFW proudly supports Rep. Bilirakis’ efforts to commission a survey of student
veterans currently using their earned GI Bill benefits. Without statistically
valid information on the student veteran experience or student veteran
outcomes, these special interests groups in higher education have been able to
make vague assertions about the student veteran population based off of
assumptions drawn from incomplete Department of Education data. While the VFW
can only speculate as to their motives, we believe this false narrative does a
disservice to the 1 million beneficiaries currently enrolled in VA education
benefit programs and threatens the long-term viability of programs like the
Post-9/11 GI Bill.

For example, some special interests point to low graduation rates among student
veterans at schools with high military populations like American Military
University and University of Maryland University College as indications that
these schools fail to properly serve their student veterans. What is missing
from this narrative is that the graduation rate reported by these schools to
the Department of Education likely includes very few, if any, veterans, since
the Department of Education counts only first time, full time students.

Student
veterans – particularly student veterans who enroll in non-traditional programs
like those offered by AMU or UMUC – usually start their studies on a part-time
basis while serving in the military, or they bring significant transfer credits
into their programs after completing military service, meaning they are never
considered first time, full time students, and thus are never tracked by the Department
of Education.

Moreover,
when the Department of Veterans Affairs recently launched its new comparison
tool and the raw data used to compile it, the VFW was surprised to learn of all
the programs across higher education that reported abysmally low graduation
rates. The VFW took a closer look at many of the schools who reported
graduation rates of five percent or lower, only to realize on the Department of
Education’s College Navigator website that each of these schools were likely
comprised of non-traditional students, like student veterans. Because of these
unique circumstances, we often joke that among all of the veterans in our
office, none of us are considered a college graduate by Department of Education
standards.

Only
this week did we start to scratch the surface on understanding how student
veterans fare in higher education when SVA released its 1 Million Records Project,
tracking outcomes for nearly 1 million veterans who attended college on VA
education benefit programs after 9/11. We applaud SVA for its groundbreaking
findings, which demonstrated that student veterans fare well in higher
education when compared to traditional students as tracked by the Department of
Education. However, this report only scratches the surface and does not capture
attitudes and impressions of student veterans currently using their GI Bill
benefits. This is the gap in information that Rep. Bilirakis’ report would fill
in.

The
original GI Bill returned $7 to the American economy for every dollar spent on
a veteran. Historians credit the original GI Bill for building the American
middle class as we know it. The VFW believes that the Post-9/11 GI Bill has the
potential to be a similarly transformative benefit for today’s college-bound
veterans, but in times of fiscal uncertainty, we have to be able to demonstrate
this to the American public. We encourage Congress to quickly pass this legislation
to better quantify the experiences of veterans in higher education.

The
VFW has long believed that the services provided by the Department of Labor’s
Veterans Employment and Training Service (VETS) could provide a critical
gateway for veterans into meaningful civilian employment after military
service. The key piece to providing career opportunities rests with Disabled
Veterans Outreach Program specialists (DVOPs) and Local Veterans Employment
Representatives (LVERs) located at American Jobs Centers around the country.
Unfortunately, the VFW has seen that not all DVOPs and LVERs have the same
capability, and not all veterans and employers know what they have to offer.

Recently, the VFW was approached by a small business owner in Indiana who was
looking to hire a couple of veterans to round out his company. We directed the
business to the local LVER. In less than a day the LVER had identified several
potential candidates and the business had lined up interviews.

The
VFW believes that businesses want to hire veterans, and DVOPs and LVERs stand
uniquely poised to make these connections. Unfortunately, we have not properly
evaluated what works and what does not work in communities around the country.
To better understand the veteran hiring experience, the VFW supports the
subcommittee’s draft legislation to conduct a longitudinal study on the
outcomes for veterans who utilize DVOP and LVER services. We look forward to
working with the committee to pass this legislation.

Chairman
Flores, Ranking Member Takano, this concludes my statement and I am happy to
answer any questions you may have.

Information Required by Rule XI2(g)(4) of the
House of Representatives

Pursuant to Rule XI2(g)(4) of the House of
Representatives, VFW has not received any federal grants in Fiscal Year 2013,
nor has it received any federal grants in the two previous Fiscal Years.